When you think about getting a tracker for your wallet or keys, the first thing that comes to mind is likely Apple’s AirTag. But many people are replacing theirs with this other, wallet-friendly device in the shape of a credit card.

The KeySmart SmartCard is built for wallets, but it still works with the same Find My system as the AirTag. The SmartCard will fit beside your credit cards and cash, whereas Apple’s tracker will leave a huge bulge and not fit comfortably in your pocket. 

These credit card-shaped trackers aren’t just good for wallets, but luggage, passports, and pet carriers. During Deal Days (our version of Prime Day), you can pick up a 3-pack for $74.97 with free shipping for a limited time (reg. $119.97)—just $25 each, which is cheaper than the AirTag. Single units are also available. 

This wallet tracker is probably so loved because it’s basically an AirTag, just in a new form and with some pretty significant improvements. Just like the AirTag, it pairs with Apple’s Find My app, allowing you to:

• See your item’s real-time location on a map
• Play a sound on the SmartCard to locate it
• Get notifications when you leave your item behind

However, unlike the AirTag, the SmartCard will never need a battery replacement. Instead, just lay it on a Qi-enabled wireless charger every five months to keep it powered up. 

The SmartCard is also more water-resistant than the AirTag with an IPX8 waterproof rating (the AirTag is rated IPX67). This means it’s more durable in various weather conditions, ensuring the odds of tracking your items is higher if they’re lost outdoors or submerged in water.

Get your wallet-friendly AirTag alternatives in a 3-pack at its lowest price ever during Deal Days—just $74.97 with free shipping (reg. $119.97) through July 15 at 11:59 p.m. PT. No coupon is needed for this price drop.

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KeySmart® SmartCard – Works with Apple Find My (3-Pack)

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The post Finally, a wallet tracker that fits—and it’s cheaper than AirTags for Deal Days appeared first on Popular Science.

Un nuovo strumento per il calcolo dei volumi di scavo e riporto in Vektor.io – un modo rapido, intuitivo e visivo per

The nation is nearing July 4th, so you know what that means: traffic, hot dogs, and a dramatic uptick in the number of absolutely avoidable fireworks-related accidents. Thousands of people are hurt every year due to pyrotechnic mishaps. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) estimates that there were about 14,700 incidents and 11 reported deaths in 2024 alone—a 52- and 38-percent year-over-year increase for each respective outcome. There were also about 1,700 emergency room visits last year thanks to misused or malfunctioning fireworks, over a third of which related to hand and finger injuries.

But as a recent CPSC public service announcement posted to social media makes clear, bodily extremities aren’t the only bits to look out for while celebrating American independence. On Bluesky, your national product safety experts issued a friendly reminder that fireworks are liable to behave exactly as miniature, gunpowder-laden bombs are designed to behave: That is to say, explode with enough force to behead you.

Do not – launch fireworks – off your body – this July 4th – America.

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The brief PSA and its pop music soundtrack are on brand for the CPSC’s yearslong, tongue-in-cheek social media strategy. Still, it’s hard not to get the message after watching an adult-sized mannequin suddenly rendered into a cloud of debris after a standard-sized mortar tube ignites in its hands.

But even if the vast majority of fireworks enthusiasts don’t engage in such explicitly reckless behavior, the CPSC also provided a longer montage of various common misuses, including an activity as benign as  holding a sparkler too close to another person. A single sparkler heats to around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit—hot enough to ignite clothing, burn skin, and even melt some metals. An errant bottle rocket can even travel fast enough to blind a victim. Lighting a “cherry bomb” style firework while holding it can easily become the last thing that hand ever does. The video also vividly illustrates why it’s vital no one ever looks directly down the barrel of a mortar.

The CPSC recommends a few extra steps to ensure the safest celebration possible. Keep a garden hose or water bucket nearby just in case of accidental fires, and be sure to double-check the firework regulations in your area. Follow all instructions and warnings on your fireworks, using only one at a time. Never attempt to re-light or pick-up one that misfires or proves to be a dud. And, of course, let someone else oversee your recreational explosives if you have been drinking or using any drugs.

It’s all good information to keep in mind. But even if some of the advice seems obvious, warnings like the CPSC’s concise social media summary occasionally bear repeating:

“Do not – launch fireworks – off your body – this July 4th – America,” commands the commission.

The post CPSC stresses firework safety with 7-minute montage of mannequin mayhem appeared first on Popular Science.

Le iscrizioni per il quarto incontro di questo ciclo di seminari itineranti per le province italiane sono aperte a

July might feel like slim pickings for stargazers—after all, the month’s most interesting celestial phenomenon doesn’t even happen at night (or at all in most parts of the world)! However, patient nocturnal types will be rewarded twice over towards the end of this month As the old adage says: good things come to those who wait.

July’s full moon is the Buck Moon, a name that comes from the fact that midsummer finds male deer’s antlers at their largest and most impressive for the year. If you didn’t already know, deer shed their antlers every year! It reaches peak illumination on July 10 at 4:30 p.m. EDT, so be sure to catch it once the sun sets and the moon rises. 

Alternative names for July’s full moon  include several horticulture-themed monikers: the Blueberry Moon and Raspberry Moon (both from Anishinaabemowin), the Corn in Tassel Moon (Cherokee) and the String Bean Moon (Ohyotsheli). To both the Tunica and Seneca, meanwhile, this month’s moon is the Little Sister of the Summer Moon, a reference to the fact that June’s moon is the Summer Moon proper. 

July 15: Lāhainā Noon #2 for 2025

We discussed the phenomenon known in Hawai’i as Lāhainā Noon back in May. Lāhainā Noon takes place when the sun is directly overhead, resulting in a rather disconcerting lack of shadows. The phenomenon only occurs in the tropics, and only for two short periods a year.July 15 marks the arrival in Honolulu of the second and final Lāhainā Noon for 2025.

The time and date varies on exact location; as per Love Big Island, if you’re in Hawai’i, your shadow will disappear for a few minutes at the following times:

Honolulu (O‘ahu): 12:37 pm (July 15)

Kahului (Maui): 12:32 pm (July 17 and 18)

Līhuʻe (Kauai): 12:43 pm (July 11)

Hilo: 12:26 pm (July 23 and 24)

Kona: 12:30 pm (July 24)

Interestingly, this solar  phenomenon was used in what may have been the first measurement of the Earth’s circumference. Back in the 3rd century BCE, Erastosthenes–Greek mathematician, polymath, and custodian of the famed library of Alexandria– learned that while Lāhaina Noon occurred in Syene, where the sun famously shone straight into the bottom of a well at high noon, it was not observed in Alexandria.

Erastosthenes realized that if he assumed the sun’s rays to be parallel, the lack of a shadow in Syene could be explained by the curvature of the Earth. He also realized that if he erected a pole of a known length in Alexandria and measured the length of the shadow it cast, he could construct a right triangle with the two short sides being the pole and the shadow. The resulting triangle would be similar to one where the two short sides were the earth’s radius and the distance between Syene and Alexandria. If he measured the opposite angle of the smaller triangle, he would know the same angle on the large triangle.

He measured an angle of about 7°, and concluded that the distance between Syene and Alexandria was about 1/50 (i.e. 7°/360°) of the Earth’s circumference. His resultant calculation put the Earth’s circumference at somewhere between 24,000 and 25,000 miles—remarkably close to the modern measurement of 24,901 miles. 

While very little of the moon is illuminated as it wanes to complete darkness, the rest of the disc is still very much there. The resulting light can create some unexpectedly lovely celestial phenomena of its own. A good example comes towards the end of this month, as the crescent moon passes directly over the Pleiades cluster. As per Earth Sky, this will result in the stars of the Pleiades appearing to vanish one by one—and then reappear as the moon passes by. To enjoy the show, look east an hour or so before dawn.

Late July and early August will be a treat for meteorite aficionados. There’s the famous Perseids, which we’ll discuss next month, but the Delta Aquariids are up first. This meteor shower will begin on July 18, continuing throughout July and into early August. The Delta Aquariids originates with the comet 96P/Machholz, which gets perilously close to the sun at its closest approach, and has a chemical composition that’s pretty much unique amongst known comets. (Also: if you’re wondering how meteor showers relate to comets, we’ve got you covered.)

To observe the Delta Aquariids, look south to the bright star Fomalhaut.The meteorites’ “radiant point,”or point of origin, is right above this star.  The shower is predicted to peak around 2 a.m. local time on July 30. That’s a  lot of stargazing and fun cosmic knowledge for July. Whatever you’re setting your sights on, you’ll get the best experience if you get away from any sources of light pollution—and you make sure to check out our stargazing tips before you head off into the night.

Until next month!

The post July stargazing: Buck Moon, Lāhainā Noon, and meteorites (soon) appeared first on Popular Science.

Ahead of the blockbuster July 4 movie weekend, a new trailer just dropped for the upcoming sci-fi action adventure film–Project Hail Mary. The film is based on a 2021 novel of the same name by computer programmer and author Andy Weir. His 2011 novel The Martian, was also adapted into a film that starred Matt Damon in 2015. 

Based on the novel of the same time, the film follows science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) who suddenly wakes up on a spaceship light years from home. Grace has zero recollection of who he is or how he got there. His memory slowly returns and he begins to uncover his real mission. Grace must solve the riddle of the mysterious substance that is causing the sun to die out. He must harness all of his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas in order to save the Earth from extinction. However, an unexpected friendship means that he might not be in this quest alone.

Project Hail Mary hits theaters on March 20, 2026. 

The post Watch the first trailer for ‘Project Hail Mary’ appeared first on Popular Science.

I thought I knew my way around Microsoft Office—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, the usual suspects. But nobody warned me that nearly every job in my life would quietly demand I also be good at making graphs. In marketing, I’m basically a full-time chart stylist. In teaching, it’s all admin reports and grade breakdowns. And honestly? I’ve always been pretty bad at turning numbers into anything remotely nice to look at.

That changed when I found Microsoft Visio. It’s like the secret weapon buried in the Microsoft vault, built for people like me who just want to drag and drop their way to a clean, professional-looking diagram. No design skills, no 365 subscription, and no hassle. The best part? It’s only $14.97 right now, but that ends at midnight, so you better get it soon if you’re interested (reg. $249.99).

Visio makes data-heavy work easier to understand and, honestly, a little nicer to look at. Whether you’re building an org chart, sketching out a network, or trying to map out a process flow for your team, Visio gives you tools that make the job easier. You can start with one of the dozens of built-in templates, or choose from more than 250,000 shapes and icons that are already available in Visio’s online ecosystem.

One of my favorite parts is how simple it is to connect Visio with Excel. If you’ve got a spreadsheet full of data, you can import it and automatically generate things like org charts or diagrams. And if you’re on a touch-enabled device, you can even draw or annotate with a pen or your finger. You don’t need to be a designer, and you don’t need to pay for a Microsoft 365 subscription just to use it. It’s a one-time purchase, and you own it for life.

This version is Visio Professional 2021, so you’re getting all the features of Visio Standard along with extras like industry-standard diagram support (BPMN 2.0, IEEE, UML 2.5) and more collaboration options.

Don’t miss your chance to get Microsoft Visio for Windows at $14.97 before midnight on June 29 at 11:59 p.m. PT (reg. $249.99). No coupon is needed to get this price.

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Microsoft Visio 2021 Professional: Lifetime License for Windows

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The post The most useful Microsoft app nobody ever talks about appeared first on Popular Science.

There are moments in life when the clouds part, the light shines through, and the internet hands you a deal so good, you read it twice just to be sure it’s real. This is one of those moments.

Right now, a refurbished 13.3” MacBook Air (mid-2017) is going for just $197.97 with free shipping. And no, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you—it’s real, and it’s already a best seller.

Originally listed at $999, this MacBook Air comes with a stunning $199.97 price tag that makes it one of the most exciting laptop deals available right now. And it’s not some mystery-brand throwaway device either. We’re talking about a genuine and iconic Apple machine that’s been Grade A/B refurbished—fully tested, functional, and ready to go, with only minimal signs of previous use. If you can live with a tiny scuff or two (and let’s face it, you probably put more scratches on your sunglasses), you’ll get a laptop that looks great and works even better.

Inside, it’s rocking a solid combo: an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD. It’s reliable and can handle day-to-day tasks with zero drama. Whether you’re typing reports, streaming shows, online shopping across too many tabs for the best deal, or tackling your inbox, this MacBook Air keeps up effortlessly.

The 13.3″ display is bright and crisp, offering a comfortable workspace without being bulky. The build quality? Classic Apple—clean lines, aluminum body, minimalist vibes. And despite being a 2017 model, the battery life still holds up surprisingly well, getting you through the day (up to 12 hours) on a full charge.

If your current laptop feels more like a liability than a tool, this might be the right time to make a switch.

Get this smart, dependable refurbished Apple MacBook Air 13.3″ from 2017 for $197.97 (reg. $999 MSRP) with free shipping when you order through July 20 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

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Apple MacBook Air 13.3″ (2017) 1.8GHz i5 8GB RAM 128GB SSD Silver (Refurbished)

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The post This bestselling MacBook Air is 79 percent off right now appeared first on Popular Science.

The big sky country of the western North America is a world-renowned dinosaur playground. Household-name dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, to the lesser known duck-billed Maiasaura once ate, slept, laid eggs, and pooped in this expansive region of plains, rivers, lakes, and mountains. 

However, the eastern half of the continent shouldn’t be left out when the urge to hunt for fossils strikes. Take, for instance, the often maligned state of New Jersey. The Garden State is home to a rock layer that is essentially a geological dinosaur tombstone, preserving remnants of the planet Earth at a rather momentous time. 

“What we have is a bone bed, and we can see it’s right at the end of the Cretaceous Period,” Kenneth Lacovara, a geologist and paleontologist at Rowan University tells Popular Science. “So what we really have is the best window into the last moments of the dinosaurs that exist on the planet.”

Among his larger finds, Lacovara led the team that discovered the giant, 60-ton behemoth Dreadnoughtus in Argentina that was featured in 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion. When not out finding new Titanosaurs, Lacovara and other paleontologists have spent the last 17 years closer to his home, combing this end-Cretaceous bone bed square meter by square meter. They’ve recorded over 100,000 fossils, representing more than 100 species of plants and animals.

“All [of the fossils] from this end-Cretaceous boundary layer represent the extinction of the dinosaurs,” says Lacovara.

Now, at a new museum and fossil park, citizen scientists can take to the dirt themselves to help put together the puzzle of how, when, and why the largest animals to ever walk the Earth met their demise. 

Over the past several decades, paleontologists have uncovered several more details on the death of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Someday during the spring, an asteroid about 6 to 12 miles-wide slammed into the waters off of present-day eastern Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

“From where I am in New Jersey, your first indication that something has gone wrong would have been at about eight minutes and 37 seconds later. At our location, there would have been a magnitude 10.3 earthquake. A 10.3 earthquake is bigger than the Earth can make. The Earth has to be rung from the outside like a bell to get an earthquake that big, since rocks don’t have enough strength to build that much stress up before they snap,” explains Lacovara.

That unprecedented earthquake would have spurred mega tsunamis with 2-mile high waves. It also would have been strong enough that 90-ton Sauropods and other mega dinosaurs would have been knocked off their feet–to their deaths.

“If you’re a huge Sauropod dinosaur and you fall down, you probably die, you probably burst,” says Lacovara.

After the asteroid’s impact, the resulting crater would have been about 12 times the size of the state of Massachusetts. The impact likely sent up trillions of millimeter sized capsules of debris dripping with energy, like the fire coming off of a rocket. 

“Within the first hour after the impact, global temperatures get up somewhere between toaster oven and pizza oven,” says Lacovara. “So, if you’re on the surface of the Earth that day, if you had no place to hide, you’re toast.”

Fan favorite dinosaurs Tyrannosaurs rex and Triceratops ultimately died out either quickly from the impact itself or more slowly from the food shortages caused by debris blocking the sunlight, or other planetary upheaval. However, not all of the dinosaurs really disappeared.

[ Related: How do we know what dinosaurs looked like? ]

The first Jurassic Park novel and subsequent 1993 film introduced a general audience to the idea that birds are dinosaurs. According to Lacovara, there’s now a generation of working planetologists that credit Jurassic Park with sparking their interest in paleontology and science. Additionally, we have even more supporting evidence for the fact that some dinosaurs evolved into birds.

“Birds are clearly dinosaurs,” says Lacovara. “To be considered a dinosaur, you have to have the first dinosaur for an ancestor, and birds do. It’s the same reason why we’re mammals. We all have the first mammal for an ancestor, and so does kangaroo, and so does blue whale, and so does a hamster.”

It’s the same with birds from tiny swallows up to giant flamingos or blue herons. They’re dinosaurs that share the common ancestor–two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods, which include giants like Tyrannosaurs and smaller raptors. Or as Lacovara puts it, “a hummingbird is a dinosaur, to the same degree that T. Rex, or a stegosaurus is a dinosaur.”

Paleontologists also have a better record of how feathers evolved. Their first function was not flight, but rather insulation. The feathers adorning extinct dinosaurs like Yutyrannus huali and various raptor species likely would have sported something similar to the downy feathers on baby birds, instead of the flat interlocking feathers that evolved later on. 

“It’s only later that some of these feathered, non-avian dinosaurs began,” says Lacovara. “They had an arboreal lifestyle, and they began jumping from tree to tree.”

While paleontologists have made leaps and bounds in understanding both how dinosaurs lived and died, there is still a lot to learn about all extinct living things, from ammonites on up to the mighty megalodon. 

To help discover even more in the fossil record, digging enthusiasts can visit the new Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University in Sewell, New Jersey. About 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia, the site offers the opportunity to not see some bones up close and also dig for their own discoveries in a former quarry. The park is somewhat of a real Jurassic Park–only without the threat of Velociraptors. 

With a stream of films, documentary series such as Walking with Dinosaurs, and books, the lure of dinosaurs endures. That love goes deeper than the fun of digging up dinosaur bones, fossilized poop, or Megaolodon teeth. 

“I think it’s for a bunch of reasons. For one, they were real. This isn’t Godzilla or Bigfoot. These things were real,” says Lacovara.

As for kids, arguably the target audience for the real Edleman Fossil Park & Museum and fictional Jurassic Park, Lacovara believes that dinosaurs often give children their first taste of expertise.

“For a number of years, they’ve been told about everything by everybody. ‘Here’s how to use a fork, here’s how to lock the door, here’s how to tie your shoes.’ Now, for the first time, they’re telling other people things that those other people don’t know,” he says.

Kids also make excellent amateur fossil hunters, and taking that expertise and applying it to the field can be quite exciting. Digging for fossils anywhere also opens exciting avenues to discoveries both big and small–from small seashell-like brachiopods in the damp soil to shark teeth and bigger bones. 

“When a kid comes to the fossil park and finds that little clam shell or shark tooth with their own hands, that’s a legitimate discovery. No human has ever seen that thing before. It’s a little piece of information no human has ever known that thing before,” says Lacavora. “So they become a legitimate explorer at that moment. And who doesn’t want to be that?”

[ Related: Celebrate 30 years of Jurassic Park with these recent dinosaur discoveries. ]

While dinosaur bones and their extinction story might seem relegated to the past, natural history museums and paleontology offer us an important window to the future. Lacovara cites the quote attributed to Winson Churchill, “The farther back you can look, the farther forward you can see,” as an example of the good that paleontology gives to the world and how natural history museums offer an important conservation message. 

“It’s a lens through which we can contextualize our present moment to hopefully help us make better choices for the future,” he says. “People love what they know, and people protect what they love. So our mission is to connect people with both their ancient planet, and their present planet.”

It’s a planet that has faced at least five waves of mass extinction and is potentially in the cold grips of a sixth, one that is driven by human activity and not a force of nature like a giant asteroid strike or volcanic eruptions. 

“We’ve been here a very, very short amount of time. And what makes us think that we have some privileged position, that our place in the future is guaranteed? It is not, and the kind of future that we would wish for our posterity is only going to happen if we work for it,” says Lacovara. “It is not going to happen by accident.”

The post A dinosaur ‘tombstone’ lurks underneath New Jersey appeared first on Popular Science.

Leopards are “near threatened” worldwide, and listed as critically endangered in Bangladesh. That’s why staff members at the country’s non-profit organization Creative Conservation Alliance (CCA) were so excited when their camera traps captured photos of leopards. The big spotted cats were observed in the forests of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a hilly region in Bangladesh on the border with India and Myanmar. 

“These photos provide evidence that these elusive big cats still persist in the region,” the organization wrote in a Facebook post. The post’s images feature a leopard (perhaps two different leopards) prowling through a leafy underbrush. The Chittagong Hill Tracts is also home to a number of Indigenous tribes. The leopard’s “survival depends on the crucial support of local communities, who share their habitat,” the post continued.

According to a 2023 study, leopards inhabited most of Bangladesh until the end of the 19th century. Hunger and starvation from habitat fragmentation, continuous human disturbances, and diminishing prey have since greatly decreased their populations, with poaching, killing, and smuggling only making matters worse. 

Monirul Khan, a zoologist at Jahangirnagar University in Bangladesh’s capital, told CBS News that earlier reports on the presence of leopards had relied on brief sightings and paw prints. “As an extremely rare and secretive species, the latest sighting is very significant,” Khan explained. “It highlights the importance of the remaining natural forest in the Chittagong Hill Tracts as a reserve of wildlife habitat.”

The 2023 study also suggested conservative initiatives such as establishing wildlife corridors, increasing bush coverages, and pursuing environmental justice.

“CCA and partner organizations are working on the ground to protect these magnificent creatures and ensure a future where leopards and people coexist,” the CCA concluded. 

[ Related: Northern India’s elusive snow leopards get their close up. ]

Coexistence hasn’t been easy, however. According to the University of Kent, Bangladesh and India are notable examples of countries with large human population densities close to major predators—a proximity that leads to problematic encounters, including human-leopard conflicts that often end with the leopard’s death.

Nevertheless, these recent photographs provide hope that there might still be enough leopards around for a coexistence to exist in the first place. 

The post Elusive and critically endangered leopard caught on camera appeared first on Popular Science.

While rocks are not exactly living things, they are not immune to Earth’s fury. Ever-shifting tectonic plates constantly devour and pulverize them, or some rocks get turned into diamonds from the immense pressure underneath our feet. While life on Earth has almost been wiped out at least five times, some rocks pre-date life on Earth and have stood the ultimate test of time. 

Gray rocks uncovered in northern Nunavik, Quebec, Canada may be the ultimate primordial find. The stones date back 4.16 billion years to the Hadean era and are the oldest known rocks on the planet. They are described in a study published June 26 in the journal Science. 

Earth was a ball of molten lava when it first formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists originally believed that Earth’s first eon–the Hadean–ended when the first rocks formed. A golden spike–a geological marker indicates a boundary between time periods–that ended the Hadean eon is about 4.03 billion years old and located in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

The Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt, located over 1,000 miles southeast of the Hadean’s golden spike, has long been known for its ancient rocks. However, researchers have disagreed about the true age of these plains of gray stone that line the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in Quebec. In 2008, researchers proposed that these rocks dated back 4.3 billion years. Other scientists using a different dating method contested, saying that contaminants from ages ago were altering the rocks’ age and they were only 3.8 billion years old.

“For over 15 years, the scientific community has debated the age of volcanic rocks from northern Quebec,” study co-author and University of Ottawa geologist Jonathan O’Neill said in a statement. “Our previous research suggested that they could date back 4.3 billion years, but this wasn’t the consensus.”

[ Related: How old is Earth? It’s a surprisingly tough question to answer. ]

This new study used rock samples from a different part of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt. The samples were collected in 2017 near the municipality of Inukjuak, Nunavik, by study co-author Christian Sole, while was completing his Master’s degree. 

To determine the age of these rocks, the team combined geochemistry with petrology–a branch in geology that focuses on the composition, texture, and structure of rocks and the conditions under which they form. They also applied two radiometric dating methods to see how radioactive isotopes of the elements samarium and neodymium change over time.

[ Related: Ancient rocks tie Roman Empire’s collapse to a mini ice age. ]

They found that both chronometers indicated that the rocks are 4.16 billion years old. Since the planet Earth formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, this puts the rocks within a few hundred million years of our planet’s earliest day–somewhat close in geological time. Typically, primordial rocks like these are melted and used over and over again by Earth’s moving tectonic plates. While scientists uncovered some 4 billion-year-old rocks in Canada’s Acasta Gneiss Complex, finding them at the surface is not common.

According to the team, this discovery opens a unique window on the early Earth, potentially offering up clues to its existence. 

“Understanding these rocks is going back to the very origins of our planet,” O’Neill said. “This allows us to better understand how the first continents were formed and to reconstruct the environment from which life could have emerged.”

The post Earth’s oldest rocks date back 4.16 billion years appeared first on Popular Science.

It’s fertility on ice. Egg-freezing boomed in the last decade, with a 400 percent increase since 2012. Now, research about sperm degradation and its impact on family-building is driving a generation of health-conscious men to consider their own fertility preservation. 

Whether men of the past were left out or checked-out of the fertility conversation depends on who you ask. But old beliefs about the lifelong assurance of fatherhood are out and men are taking control of their reproductive futures with the help of mail-in sperm testing and freezing. Fertility is no longer just “a women’s issue.”

“The father contributes half the genome,” Dr. Michael Eisenberg, a urologist at Stanford, tells Popular Science. He urges men to be aware of and proactive about their side of the process. 

[Related: Plants could be manipulating sperm in completely new ways. ]

Studies point to poor sperm quality as a factor in couples’ challenges getting pregnant. According to reproductive health experts, sperm can degrade over time. 

“Organic male infertility does increase with age,” Dr. Tia Jackson-Bey, a reproductive endocrinologist at RMA New York, tells Popular Science. Jackson-Bey spends her days working with couples trying to conceive. When a couple is having an issue, about half the time, it’s coming from the male.

Hollywood stars fathering children into their 60s and beyond give the public an unrealistic idea about the permanence of fatherhood and the potential risks in delaying it. In 2021, a team of UK researchers studying 4,271 men across a range of ages found that men’s fertility success rates decrease over time with a significant decline among men above 51 years old. 

And the challenges don’t stop at conception. Poor quality sperm is associated with obstacles at every stage of family-building–from difficulty getting pregnant, to pregnancy complications, to health issues in offspring. There may be a number of reasons for this cavalcade of complications, but an important factor is the gradual buildup of DNA damage in the sperm.

“The [older] sperm have higher rates of DNA damage,” Dr. Guy Morris, lead researcher in the 2021 study on men’s decreasing fertility success over time, tells Popular Science. “We’ve shown that endpoint pretty consistently associated with age.” From puberty until death, male germ cells divide approximately every 16 days. As the cells replicate over and over to create more sperm, mutations can occur. Eisenberg explains that an estimated two new mutations will show up in sperm DNA every year. This accumulation of “errors” may be why older fathers are associated with higher rates of miscarriages, preterm births, preeclampsia, and gestational diabetes in the mother during pregnancy, as well as higher rates of autism, birth defects, and childhood cancer among their children.

Other possible reasons for men’s decline in fertility are hormonal changes that happen as they age as well as simply the effects of living life. Exposure to microplastics and endocrine-disrupting chemicals in our environment can affect sperm, along with poor lifestyle choices. 

“The longer you’re alive, the more exposure you may have to these, and the more opportunity they have to cause issues,” Eisenberg says. 

Concern about sperm quality has led some men to clinics to freeze their sperm for later use. Fertility companies now offer men mail-in sperm freezing they can take advantage of from home and freeze for years for an annual fee.

Khaled Kteily is the CEO of Legacy, a male fertility start-up and clinic that offers customers mail-in sperm testing and freezing. He started his company after his own fertility scare years ago. 

“I always imagined myself as a dad and a husband. [By freezing], I can protect my ability to have children for the rest of my life,” Kteily tells Popular Science. 

Getting through the scare made Kteily want to offer fertility preservation to as many men as possible. “All you have to do is masturbate at home – once.”

But freezing sperm may not be for everyone. There are storage fees ($100-300 per year). And while they pale in comparison to those of cryogenic egg freezing ($500-1000 per year), it’s still a commitment. Additionally, changes to sperm over time are usually small from year to year in healthy men, but can accumulate over many years. 

“If you’re 30 and planning to have kids in 5 years, don’t worry about it,” Yale urologist Dr. Stanton Honig tells Popular Science. “But if you’re 30 and planning on putting it off for 15 years, freezing may be a reasonable thing to consider.” 

Jackson-Bey recommends sperm freezing for men with hazardous jobs, jobs with toxic exposures, or medical conditions that may require sperm-affecting treatment or surgery. She also advocates freezing for men joining the military, men who need to be away from their spouses for lengthy periods of time, and men who anticipate needing to prioritize work over family for a number of years. 

A growing number of Legacy’s customers are simply health-conscious men who want to secure the option of parenthood no matter what life throws their way, according to Kteily. 

In addition to sperm freezing, companies like Legacy offer something else that is highly recommended for all men: sperm testing. Semen analyses–whether in a clinic or at-home with a mail-in kit–can tell patients about their individual sperm count (how much sperm is in the semen), motility (how efficiently the sperm cells move), and morphology (whether or not cells are the right shape and size).

“Just because you were fertile years ago doesn’t mean you’re fertile today,” reproductive endocrinologist at RMA New Jersey Dr. Michael Simoni tells Popular Science.

If a mail-in test comes back abnormal, doctors recommend making an appointment with a reproductive urologist. While you can’t change your age, the good news is that many issues with sperm are fixable.

[ Related: Next-generation male contraceptives could rely on the perfect temperature. ]

“There are a lot of underlying problems that can affect health and that can also be treatable or reversible, that allow a male to improve the quality of the sperm,” says Honig.

Habits like smoking tobacco or marijuana, vaping, recreational drugs, drinking alcohol, poor nutrition, high-heat exposure to the testes, excessive weight, and lack of exercise can affect sperm quality. As can hormonal medications, like testosterone, which some men take to help their sex drive, but can cause their sperm count to plunge. Healthy adjustments in behavior and everyday choices can improve poor test outcomes. 

Sperm testing can also tell you a lot about your overall health. Women have their periods as a monthly signal that things are normal or abnormal–men have their sperm. The best time to get your sperm tested is the first time you feel curious about it, even if you’re young, Eisenberg says. Sperm is, “the sixth vital sign.” 

This story is part of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Should I freeze my sperm? Men consider their ‘sixth vital sign.’ appeared first on Popular Science.

In 2025, it’s not uncommon for a typical household to have a drawer overflowing with discarded phones and cables. But this graveyard of circuitry isn’t just a static memorial to past tech trends. For those willing to put in the effort, each of those old iPhones and micro USB cables still contains a small amount of valuable metals and minerals—including gold. Researchers estimate that a single printed circuit board can contain around 200–900 mg of gold per kilogram.

The actual extraction of those precious metals from discarded tech is a labor-intensive process. Historically, it has often required the use of highly toxic chemicals like cyanide and mercury, which can be harmful both to the individuals doing the extraction and to the environment. But, researchers at Flinders University in Australia now say they’ve developed a new method of gold extraction and recycling that is far less hazardous and may have a lower environmental impact if scaled for production. By using a leaching reagent derived from  trichloroisocyanuric acid—a sustainable compound commonly used in water disinfection—they were able to dissolve and extract gold without relying on dangerous chemicals.

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Nature Sustainability this week, demonstrate they could use their process to extract gold from e-waste, as well as used ore.

“Overall, this work provides a viable approach to achieve greener gold production from both primary and secondary resources, improving the sustainability of the gold supply,” they write in the paper. 

Gold has captured human attention for millennia. It backed the currency of empires, adorned countless pieces of royal jewelry, and has come to the rescue in root canals. Today, the coveted element is widely used in electronics, valued for its natural electrical conductivity, durability, and high resistance to corrosion. As a result, small amounts of gold are likely present in most of the devices found on a typical office worker’s desk. And while tech companies have taken steps to extract and recycle that gold for years, much of it still ends up in landfills. The United Nations estimates that the world produced around 62 million tons of e-waste in 2022—a figure that’s up 82 percent from 2010.

Contamination from toxic substances used to strip gold from devices isn’t the only concern. The industrial leaching process typically requires vast quantities of water, further compounding its environmental impact. Runoff from those facilities can also make their way into food supplies or local wildlife. 

The Flinders University researchers took a different approach. First, they developed a process using the trichloroisocyanuric acid that, when activated by salt water, effectively dissolved gold without the need for toxic substances. Next, they bound the dissolved gold to a new sulfur-rich polymer they designed themselves. The polymer was engineered to serve as a vehicle for selectively capturing gold, even in the presence of many other metals. Once the gold was extracted, the polymer could “unmake” itself, reverting to its monomer state and leaving the gold behind. That fully separated gold could then be recycled and used again in new products.

“The aim is to provide effective gold recovery methods that support the many uses of gold, while lessening the impact on the environment and human health,” Flinders University professor and paper authorJustin Chalker said in a statement. 

In testing, the researchers demonstrated that their process could extract gold not only from e-waste, but also from ore concentrates and scientific waste streams. Although, the sheer volume of global e-waste makes it the most obvious candidate to benefit from this method. The researchers say they are currently working with mining and e-waste recycling companies to test the process on a larger scale.

“We dived into a mound of e-waste and climbed out with a block of gold!” Flinders University research associate and paper co-author Harshal Patel said in a statement. “I hope this research inspires impactful solutions to pressing global challenges.”

That said, everyday electronics consumers don’t need to wait for this new method to scale up in order to benefit from e-waste recycling. Most major cities have certified e-waste recycling centers that accept large quantities of discarded electronics. 
Local scrap yards, as well as some private companies, will also pay a small amount for scrapped devices—especially those containing relatively high amounts of gold, silver, or copper. Large nonprofits like Goodwill also offer electronics recycling services. Many of these organizations handle the hard work of separating components from used devices, then sell the individual parts to industrial recyclers.

The post Your outdated tech might be a ‘goldmine’ appeared first on Popular Science.

Around 60 million years ago, a large species of Swaindelphys—extinct marsupial-like animals—roamed through modern-day Texas’ Big Bend National Park. While they were only about the size of a hedgehog, the now-extinct species Swaindelphys solastella were “gigantic” in comparison to similar Swaindelphys from the same time period, according to researchers from the University of Kansas (KU).

In a study recently published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the paleontologists  describe the recently discovered species based on previously-excavated fossils. Kristen Miller, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at KU’s Biodiversity Institute, analyzed the Texan fossils to investigate what kind of metatherians—a group including marsupials and their extinct cousins—they’d belonged to. 

“Not only are they [Swaindelphys solastella] the largest metatherians from this time period, but they’re also the youngest and located at the most southern latitude,” Miller said in the statement, which describes the animal as a sort of big possum. 

Chris Beard, a co-author of the study and a senior curator also at the Biodiversity Institute, added that “the new fossil we’re describing is notable because it’s the largest marsupial — in terms of body size–found so far in the North American Paleocene. Since everything is bigger in Texas, this is perhaps not surprising.” The Paleocene Epoch was 66 to 56 million years ago, during which North America experienced a warmer climate. Most dinosaurs had just been wiped out by the Chicxulub impactor. 

Because Swaindelphys were similar to early primates, studying the former can shed light on the primates who shared their same ecosystem. Notably, the distribution of Swaindelphys remains could provide insight into the geography of the time, specifically in terms of how long-gone  natural features may have limited the spread of certain species—including primates. 

“In place of desert terrain seen today, there was a lot more vegetation and probably lots of rivers and streams,” Miller said. “We find these fossils in what we call fluvial deposits — so, deposits from ancient river systems.”

The Swaindelphys solastella remains join a host of other specimens shedding light on the fossil differences between northern regions, like Wyoming and Alberta, Canada, and southern zones, like the US-Mexico border near Big Bend National Park. In Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin, the fossil record is so complete that it allows for biostratigraphy—identifying time periods based on fossil layers. Outside of the Bighorn Basin, however, biostratigraphy becomes more difficult. 

[ Related: Bones of a raccoon-sized prehistoric lizard sat in a jar for 20 years. ]

Within this context, Miller, Beard, and colleagues found “an ancient high point or divide in the landscape, in southern Wyoming, that seems to correspond with the shift we see,” Miller said. “North of that ancient divide, we see the classic Bighorn Basin taxa in their expected time periods,” she added. “But south of that, in river drainages that originate in the central Rockies and areas farther to the south, things start to go a little wacky. What we’re proposing is that this shift in river drainages marked the boundaries where ancient species of marsupials and primates lived.”

In other words, the rivers and high points impacted the spread of certain species. Moving forward, Miller plans to continue investigating this hypothesis with further research. 

The post Shockingly large extinct possum uncovered in Texas appeared first on Popular Science.

Wildlife trafficking of turtles, parrots, and more in Mexico—with most transactions conducted on social media—is threatening the country’s revered biodiversity. In Hispanic America as a whole, a 2024 report documented a total of 1,945 seizures and poaching incidents highlighted by media between 2017 and 2022, impacting at least 102,577 wild animals. The report includes two seizures in Mexico that rescued a total of 29,502 mud turtles and musk turtles in 2020. 

Turtles are once again in Mexico’s limelight, after authorities announced the rescue of 3,427 freshwater turtle hatchlings at a checkpoint along the San Cristóbal-Chiapa de Corzo highway. The small reptiles were being transported in overcrowded cardboard boxes by a suspect authorities called “José ‘N.’” 

[ Related: Giant three-pound rats trained to sniff out illegal poaching. ]

“Security forces caught José ‘N’ in the act of illegally transporting more than 3,000 turtles commonly known as hicotea turtles,” reads a translated statement by the Federal Attorney General’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa). “The specimens were being transported without documentation proving their legal origin, which constitutes a violation of current environmental regulations.”

The seizure came within the context of a broader surveillance operation by Mexican authorities against illegal wildlife trafficking. The turtles are Meso-American sliders (Trachemys venusta), according to the statement. Given their overexploitation in Mexico, Meso-American sliders are currently “subject to special protection.”

“As a result, the authorities handed José ‘N’ over to the Public Prosecutor’s Office and informed Profepa so that it could secure the specimens, which were taken to a registered Environmental Management Unit (UMA), where they are currently receiving medical care and assessment,” the statement continues. 

Profepa initiated the appropriate administrative procedures and is supporting the Attorney General’s Office’s investigation. They are also monitoring the turtle hatchlings, and will prioritize returning them to their natural environment if possible. 

The statement ends with a reminder that illegal wildlife trafficking seriously damages Mexico’s biodiversity, and that citizens should report illegal wildlife activities.

The post 3,427 trafficked baby turtles rescued in Mexico appeared first on Popular Science.

Tiny rodents living in a major American city are unique examples of evolution playing out in real time. 

Like geologic time itself, the process of evolution itself is generally a very slow process with teeny tiny changes passed down over several generations. All of these small changes eventually result in new adaptations and potentially new species over thousands or millions of years. However, in the face of dramatic shifts in the world around them from climate change to human encroachment, species sometimes must rapidly adapt or die.

One of these rapid examples of evolution was hidden away in the drawers of Chicago’s Field Museum. While comparing the skulls of common chipmunks and voles found in the Chicagoland area collected over the past 125 years, a team found evidence that these rodents have been adapting to life in an increasingly urban environment. The findings are detailed in a study published June 26 in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology.

“Museum collections allow you to time travel,” Stephanie Smith, a study co-author and mammalogist at the Field Museum, said in a statement. “Instead of being limited to studying specimens collected over the course of one project, or one person’s lifetime, natural history collections allow you to look at things over a more evolutionarily relevant time scale.”

The mammal collections at the museum include over 245,000 specimens from all over the world. Given its location in the Windy City, they have an especially good representation of the animals from Chicago, including raccoons, skunks, a one-in-a-million blue eyed cicada, opossums, robins, and much more. The collections also represent different moments in time throughout the past century. 

“We’ve got things that are over 100 years old, and they’re in just as good of shape as things that were collected literally this year,” said Smith. “We thought, this is a great resource to exploit.”

In the new study, the team selected two rodents commonly found in Chicago: eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus) and eastern meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus).

“We chose these two species because they have different biology, and we thought they might be responding differently to the stresses of urbanization,” added study co-author and Field Museum assistant curator of mammals Anderson Feijósa. 

Chipmunks are members of the same family as squirrels. The small rodents spend most of their time aboveground, eating seeds, nuts, fruits, insects, and even frogs. Voles, on the other hand, are more closely related to hamsters. They prefer to spend their time in underground burrows and primarily eat plants.

[ Related: Squirrels gamble, too—but with their genes. ]

Field Museum Women in Science interns and study co-authors Alyssa Stringer and Luna Bian, measured the skulls of 132 chipmunks and 193 voles. Skulls contain important information about an animals’ sensory systems and diet, and they tend to be correlated with their overall body size. 

“From the skulls, we can tell a little bit about how animals are changing in a lot of different, evolutionary relevant ways—how they’re dealing with their environment and how they’re taking in information,” said Smith.

Stringer and Bian measured different parts of the skulls, noting the overall skull length, the length of the rows of teeth, and other characteristics. They also created 3D scans of the skulls of 82 of the chipmunks and 54 of the voles. This part of the analysis is called geometric morphometrics, and it digitally stacked the skull scans on top of each other so scientists could compare the distances between different, specific points.

They found small–but significant–changes in the rodents’ skulls over the past 100 years. For the chipmunks, their skulls became larger over time, while the row of teeth along the sides of the mouths shrank. The bony bumps in the voles’ skulls that hold the inner ear became smaller over time. However, why the skulls were changing was not immediately clear. 

To search for the reason behind these skull changes, the team pored over historical records on temperature and levels of urbanization around the Chicagoland area.

“We tried very hard to come up with a way to quantify the spread of urbanization,” says Feijó. “We took advantage of satellite images showing the amount of area covered by buildings, dating back to 1940.” The specimens collected before 1940 were from two different places: areas that were still wild 85 years ago (so it could safely be assumed that these spots were wild before that) and or from highly urbanized areas like downtown Chicago.

Changes in climate didn’t explain the alterations in the rodents’ skulls, but the degree of urbanization did. The differences in the ways that the skulls changed could be related to the different ways that they were affected by an increasingly urban habitat.

“Over the last century, chipmunks in Chicago have been getting bigger, but their teeth are getting smaller,” said Feijó. “We believe this is probably associated with the kind of food they’re eating. They’re probably eating more human-related food, which makes them bigger, but not necessarily healthier. Meanwhile, their teeth are smaller—we think it’s because they’re eating less hard food, like the nuts and seeds they would normally eat.”

By contrast, the voles had smaller auditory bullae–bone structures associated with hearing. 

“We think this may relate to the city being loud—having these bones be smaller might help dampen excess environmental noise,” said Smith.

While it’s clear that these rodents could evolve small changes over time to make it easier to live among humans, the team says that the overarching lesson is not that animals will just  adapt to whatever humans can throw at them. Instead, the voles with smaller ear bones and chipmunks with smaller teeth prove just how profoundly human beings affect our environment and how much we can make the world harder for our fellow animals.

“These findings clearly show that interfering with the environment has a detectable effect on wildlife,” said Feijó.

“Change is probably happening under your nose, and you don’t see it happening unless you use resources like museum collections,” concluded Smith.

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